Dame Thora Hird, DBE (28 May 1911 – 15 March 2003) was a triple BAFTA Award-winning English actress and comedian of stage and screen, presenter and writer. Her career spanned almost 75 years, and she appeared in more than 100 films. With her Northern English and her television roles, Hird became a household name and British institution.

Hird was born in the Lancashire seaside town of Morecambe. She was the youngest of Mr and Mrs James Henry Hird's three children. Thora first appeared on stage at the age of two months in a play her father was managing. She worked at the local Co-operative Group store before joining the Morecambe Repertory Theatre.[2] Her family background was largely theatrical: her mother, Marie Mayor, had been an actress, while her father managed a number of entertainment venues in Morecambe, including the Royalty Theatre where she made her first appearance, and the Central Pier. Thora often described her father, who initially did not want her to be an actress, as her sternest critic and attributed much of her talent as an actress and comedian to his guidance. Although Hird left Morecambe in the late 1940s, she retained her affection for the town, referring to herself as a "sand grown 'un", the colloquial term for anyone born in Morecambe.

Hird was a committed Christian, hosting the religious programme Praise Be!, a spin-off from Songs of Praise on the BBC. Her work for charity and on television in spite of old age and ill health made her an institution. Her advertisements for Churchill stairlifts also kept her in the public eye.

In December 1998, using a wheelchair, Dame Thora played a brief but energetic cameo role as the mother of Dolly on Dinnerladies, a sarcastic character who was particularly bitter towards her daughter.

Her last work was for BBC Radio 7: a final monologue written for her by Alan Bennett entitled The Last of the Sun, in which she played a forthright, broad-minded woman, immobile in an old people's home but still able to take a stand against the censorious and politically correct attitudes of her own daughter.

Hird had a heart-bypass operation in 1992. She suffered severe arthritis and was wheelchair bound in her later life. She died on 15 March 2003 aged 91 at a nursing home Brinsworth House, Twickenham, London, after suffering a stroke.